The Inward Song of Worlds
by painfulclarity
Summary: Danny centric AU. In which his parents don't die, and he isn't put into foster care. DM, part 1 of 5.


This is a Danny-centric AU, set in a universe in which Danny's parents didn't die, and he was never taken into foster care. The timeline has been pulled aroundslightly for my purposes, and this is a chiefly D/M fic. The title comes from 'The Whirlwind Road' by Edwin Markham. Also, I don't own the characters, etc, etc. This is part 1/5.

* * *

**The Inward Song of Worlds**

_Slowly I saw the meaning of it all-  
Meaning of life and time and death and birth,-  
But cannot tell it to the men of Earth.  
I only point the way, and they must go  
The whirlwind road of song if they would know._

* * *

The black-haired man takes a deep breath, and the world is spinning around himself. There is blood on his hands and he feels as though his heart is fragmenting into tiny pieces. He's tired, very tired, and the ground is exploding beneath his feet, his heart somewhere in his throat and pulsing with panic . It's all shattering into tiny stars, a sort of kaleidoscope wheeling and soaring and obscuring everything else around. The sidewalk's gone, the line of skyscrapers separating land from sky, the people, the trashcans, the noise, the flashing lights of the cops and the ambulances, all evaporating into nothingness. Black and empty and infinite, and then there's finally nothing at all.

* * *

Before Danny Alvarez opens his eyes, he is aware of a sort of jolting sensation. And that would make sense because he's in a car. The back of a car with his mom and dad in the front seat and they're fighting. But he's still a little disorientated - he figures he was asleep - and he doesn't say anything to them.

He yawns widely, a snippet of noise accidentally breaking from his lips but he shuts himself up quickly. He's good at that, used to it by now. His dad's shouting, calling his mom names and Danny stares out of the window. Yellow straw-like grass, miles of white fence zapping by. A brown-haired boy riding a bicycle. He looks happy, laughing and racing his blonde-haired sister. He's not from this area. Danny can tell. After a while you start to look sort of beat-down.

They make eye contact, blue eyes blink at him, and then he's gone.

Danny bites his lip, doesn't say anything to his parents even though he wants to tell his dad to shut the hell up. This happens all the time. When they get home it'll be over, and he'll keep quiet and go to his room, and wish that Raffi was still at home. Maybe he'll sneak out later to see his friends, maybe play some ball and talk to some pretty girls. And in the end it will all be okay.

* * *

That night Danny has a weird dream. It starts with a metallic clash and ends with the clinical white hostility of hospital walls, with a whole load of hellfire in the middle. He wakes up with a gaping sense of loss, as if during the night someone destroyed something very important to him. Guilt as well; as if maybe he was the someone, and he did something terrible, and it ended in something that could have changed his life.

But he wakes up in his own bed, and he can hear his dad's snoring from the other room, a reassuring low drone, and he can hear his mom's footsteps crossing gently from her bedroom to the bathroom outside his door, and so he closes his eyes and drifts softly back off to sleep.

* * *

Over the next couple of years, he starts dreaming more and more. And they're weird dreams, not good ones like the ones he used to have when he was really little about learning to fly, and not nightmares either, like the ones he used to have about his apartment block burning down, and escaping, and hearing his mom and his dad and his brother screaming inside.

Instead, there's a succession of places he doesn't recognise, houses he's living in that have nothing that belongs to him inside, rooms that are blank and white, adults and other kids that he doesn't know. Some of them have kind faces but some don't, and he dreams of anger and pain and the occasional flash of comfort that melts away far too quickly. He dreams of the cops and a priest and playing basketball and he's always totally thankful when he wakes up, because these dreams are some seriously fucked up shit.

* * *

When he's fifteen, Danny flunks his algebra final. This is for a number of reasons:

1) Raffi finally got in contact with the family again and Danny spent most of the previous night out with him and his friends.

2) He's still a little hungover from the afore-mentioned night.

3) He has always been really, really bad at algebra.

He gets told he has to go to summer school because otherwise he won't be able to pass the school year because if he's honest, his grades in his other subjects aren't too hot, either. It's because there's so much else to do than study. Go out with his friends, getting drunk with them in the park, maybe smoking a little dope as well and that's all so much more fun than doing goddamn _schoolwork_.

(Last week, when his brother saw him for the first time in a year, he raised his eyebrows, almost incredulously. "Little brother," he said, "you have _changed_."

Danny just smirked; raised an eyebrow and offered to help him get cigarettes from the store on the street corner because he knew a guy who could sneak in there and the shopkeeper wouldn't notice a thing.)

So he goes to summer school to study the intricacies of why the hell x equals y, and somewhere along the way he manages to scrape up enough credits to pass the year. Outside the school, on the bleachers, there's a group of kids that hang out there most nights that he hasn't seen before. One night they yell over to him and he goes over, and they offer him a smoke so he stays with them until it's late and dark and the wind is beginning to chill his bare arms, goosebumps breaking out on his skin. He doesn't know what time it is when he gets home and if he's honest he's a little drunk as well. The only reason he goes to summer school the next day is to see if they're there again, and they are, so he cuts class in the afternoon to sit on the bleachers. He has to admit, it's probably pure chance that he gets through summer school at all, after meeting his new friends.

* * *

Slowly he begins to shake off his old school friends and starts to hang out with his new ones more. There are six of them, two girls and four guys, and they seem to like him even though he makes the numbers even more uneven and he's a few years younger. They're mostly all Latino, like him, except Bella, who has hair so white and skin so fair Danny thinks she might be an albino. Whatever that is, he's heard that they're pale, anyway. And aside from Bella, there's Chico, Javier, Leo, Miguel and Silvana. Javier appears to be the leader, Silvana constantly pressed into his side, and sometimes they disappear off into the darkness and Javier's car starts squeaking rhythmically and Chico calls out bawdy insults. It's obvious what they're doing - Danny's fifteen and he isn't just a pretty face - but it's still a little too much information.

One night Bella touches his arm gently, her pale skin luminescent, almost glowing in the dark. They're both a little drunk and he's been smoking as well, and so it's impossible to refuse when she rubs a hand across his neck and makes him look at her. Their first time is messy and Danny almost puts his nail through the condom, and they're surrounded by bushes and crackly dried grass and the stars blinking at them from way, way up high in the sky. She's lying on Danny's jacket so she doesn't get dirty, and the next morning he discovers insect bites all over his legs and a stain on the lining of his coat.

When they go back to the street corner where all the others are, Chico's sniggering at him and nudging Miguel, who's lighting a cigarette, and Javier and Silvana have disappeared, and Leo, Leo's just sitting on a wall and gazing blankly into space.

* * *

Somehow Danny manages to keep up his grades just high enough that he doesn't flunk anything. He brings home a cluster of C's and D's on his report card that Christmas and his mom gazes at them blankly and says, well, at least they're better than Raffi's were. His dad tells her to shut the hell up about Raffi because doesn't she know they don't talk about that _comemierda_, and Danny's mom bites her lip and doesn't say anything, and Danny leaves the room.

A duet of angry voices breaks out as he walks upstairs. Clashing, discordant, harsh, his dad's voice rising above his mom's in a crescendo of sound and then there's a crash as he slams his bedroom door, and he can hear nothing at all.

* * *

That night he has another dream. About Bella to begin with, pale white body moving beneath his, grass prickly on the soles of his feet, and then it changes. The body flattens out, widens, becomes harder and more defined. Wide shoulders, narrow hips, polished dark skin and a deep male voice grunting in Danny's ear. He can feel himself about to come, gasping and writhing and there's teeth clashing in their kiss and stubble rasping against his chin.

He wakes up, blinks at the ceiling and realises he's achingly hard, the inside of his boxers sticky and damp, and he finishes himself off before going back to sleep.

* * *

Danny's always wondered where Javier gets his money from, and one night when he shows up with his fist dripping with deep crimson blood he realises. He mutters something about busting a store and it getting nasty and Danny recoils and says, fuck, there's fucking glass sticking out of your fucking hand, and Silvana yelps and hugs Javier's head in her arms. He drags himself away and says, get the hell off me, _papallona_, it stings like a motherfucker and where the fuck's Leo?

Danny's wondering why he wants Leo anyway, before Bella mutters something about a year of med school before he flunked out and hell, he's got to know his way around glass and cuts, at least. Why doesn't he just go to the fucking hospital, Danny says, but he doesn't have insurance and they'll ask questions, dumbass.

Finally Leo shows up, muttering something about, hey, guys, what's-- the fuck is that? I can't do - oh, Jesus, Javier!

Despite Leo's misgivings Danny watches as he prises splinters of glass from the cuts on Javier's arm. Javier swigs down half a bottle of vodka, for the pain apparently, despite the fact they all pooled their money for the alcohol, and there's a tidy row of glass chips all laid out on the sidewalk. The sky's like a thick dark blue blanket, soaking up their voices, the stars reflecting off the fragments of glass, splattered with thick crimson blood, and as Danny watches Leo, so intent on what he's doing, thick dark hair falling across his eyes, he feels a strange twinge in the bottom of his stomach.

All too soon it's gone as Bella rubs her hands across his shoulders and says, hey, Alvarez, let's take off, you and me, and so they do.

* * *

Rafael asks Danny to do him a favour in early March. Danny eyeballs him and mutters something sarcastic about Mom really loving her Christmas present, thanks so much, Raffi, you're such a help to the family, and Raffi cuffs him over the side of the head. A bubbling of annoyance and hey, what the fuck was that for, asshole, before Raffi grabs his arms hard, fingers burning into Danny's skin, and leans in close. He's in some trouble with some guys he knows and he needs Danny to put in a good word with Javier because you guys have been hanging around together, recently, right, kid? Danny mutters yes, and then Raffi tells him that he needs Danny to bust a liquor store for him, he's tall and skinny as a beanpole, if he goes in no one will be able to tell he's just a kid if he wears a mask, and all he has to do is wave the gun, he doesn't have to use it or anything--

And Danny says, no, Raffi. Find someone else to do your fucking dirty work, and he walks away.

* * *

That night, he wakes up in a pool of red blood that's spreading like a curse around him and it takes a moment to realise that was just a dream. He begins to put the pieces together and remembers what happened; running somewhere, away from somewhere else, he knows that much; and there's shouting and footsteps behind him but he's too breathless, laughing too hard, too buzzed on something to care. Someone else running with him, their footsteps keeping up a steady clap-clap beat and thumping on the sidewalk with his, and suddenly a dark figure and a bang before he knows what's happening. Knees give out, mouth gapes open, the glass bottle falls from his fingers and shatters on the ground. As he collapses forwards he reaches out his hand to soften the fall; he lands on broken glass and that pain is nothing, nothing compared to the ripping agony that's soaring through his body, tearing at his head and he lets out a wordless cry and presses a hand to his stomach. Can't do it, it hurts too much and blood's dripping onto the ground.

Someone's saying his name but he can't hear them because everything's going dark, blurring and fading and Danny allows his eyes to slide shut.

Yeah. His dreams are definitely fucked up.

* * *

That summer, the summer between Danny's sophomore and junior year, they're all on the beach together. Javier drove them all out in his car, Silvana in the front next to him with Leo pressed up next to her, and Danny in the back squeezed between Chico and Miguel with Bella on his lap. She's surprisingly light but then again she is tiny, bones long and thin and hollow like a chicken's.

When they get to the beach Bella's wrapped up in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans because otherwise her skin burns a painful bright pink, but the others are in the sea, throwing a ball around and splashing each other. Danny's somewhere in the middle, feet pushed tentatively into wet sand. There's a raucous volleyball game going on just next to him, guys running and jumping and suddenly he feels all the air _whoomph_ out of his stomach as one of the guys crashes into him.

He lets out a muffled curse, something along the lines of _hijo de puta_ and the guy's looking slightly puzzled now and saying something like, sorry, man, didn't see you.

Danny nods, still winded and says, don't worry, get back to all your fucking faggot friends. He can tell they're just a bunch of dumb jocks, from somewhere else probably, and he's not worried about any consequences. Javier's there, Chico, Miguel, Leo, they're all big guys and even Danny knows he can hold his own in a fight.

The guy's face tightens, lips drawing and he says, fine, fuck you too, it was a mistake, asshole, and this could get interesting. Danny shoves him, lightly, one hand on his shoulder, and he doesn't make any attempt to shove back. Just goes with the flow, takes a step backward and, listen, man, I'm not interested in fighting you, okay?

Could have fooled me, Danny snarls, and he can feel Javier's eyes on them from the sea.

The guy makes a disgusted noise in his throat and turns away. A wave of total irritation runs over Danny and he says, hey, you fucking faggot, don't turn your motherfucking back on me.

And this guy turns round again and just looks at him. And his eyes are very blue and Danny could swear he's seen him somewhere before and all of a sudden he can't think of anything except, wow, this guy is really something.

Suddenly Javier's behind Danny, water running down his lean muscular abdomen as he flicks his hair out of his face, and the knife-scars on his chest are highlighted in the sunlight. _¿Él está cojoneando contigo?_ he says, and Danny has to clear his throat before replying, no. No, he isn't fucking with me.

* * *

Danny's mom wants him to go to college. She told him that, and said she wanted him to be a doctor, maybe for kids, treating little girls and boys and making them better. She doesn't say that so often any more, since Danny's grades started getting worse, and besides, Danny never wanted to be a doctor. He's okay at science, passable, but he doesn't want to spend his life studying it. He's more interested in English. He likes the words, how they're put together, how they flow. All the different terms, alliteration, metaphors, similes.

He used to try to put his own words together, writing stories, but it never seemed to work out. He thinks that maybe he just doesn't have a good imagination. He writes a story about a warring couple, it turns out to be his mom and dad. He writes a story about a happy couple and he can see Javier and Silvana's names scrawled in invisible ink across the words. It's difficult.

Sometimes he tries to imagine a different place, away from here, from now, and that's even more difficult, somehow. He can't seem to do it.

* * *

Bella has long nails. They dig into his back as they roll around on her bed, her skin very white against his, her hair bright and spread out on her dark blue blanket. They leave bleeding crescents that scrape uncomfortably against his shirt when he gets dressed again, afterwards. She's still lying on her bed and she's so shamelessly naked that he has to avert his eyes as she blows out an elegant plume of cigarette smoke. Thinks she's fucking Marilyn Monroe, he thinks as he musters up a weak smile and kisses her goodbye.

* * *

Danny's drunk when he fucks his first guy. Very drunk as a matter of fact, and it's all Javier's fault for throwing such good parties. Everyone else is outside in the garden; the nights are getting warmer, muggy almost, and humid, but he's inside with some guy whose name he doesn't know, drinking beer and sharing a cigarette. And after a little while he realises that this guy smells really good and that he's hard, that they're both hard, and then this guy's falling to his knees and unzipping Danny's pants, and-

-_fuck_-

-Bella never did this and Danny can't stop himself from letting out a moan. You like that, huh, the guy says, moving backward and Danny presses forward towards him again because _fuck, don't move now_, and from somewhere far away there's a banging noise as the doors swing open and someone crashes in. Danny prises his eyes open just long enough to see Leo, looking as if someone just punched him in the stomach. Vague apologies littering the air, I didn't know you were in- God- sorry, I- God.

But Danny's drunk enough that he doesn't care; he closes his eyes, tilts his head backwards; it's hot, sweat's trickling down his back, making the small fingernail-shaped cuts sting.

* * *

Things with Leo finally stop being weird a couple of months later, in September. He meets Danny from school on his first day back. Danny leaves the high school to find him sprawled happily on the grass next to the sidewalk, pack of smokes in one hand, his other hand pulling vaguely at strands of grass, scattering them over the ground. Danny says, hey, and Leo looks up. Goes a little red, smiles at him, says something about the first day back at school always sucking because it's like there's some rule about it or some shit like that.

Danny doesn't want to go home just yet - he's sporting a dark purple black eye, courtesy of his dad and a fight about his clothes smelling like dope, and he's not exactly on the best of terms with either of his parents, right now. For some reason his mom gets mad whenever his dad does, but for a different reason, like she's mad at Danny for making his dad angry, instead of the reason his dad's mad, like bad grades or missing his curfew or whatever.

So he smiles at Leo and follows him down the street for a hushed conversation about _why didn't you tell me?_ and _are you… you know?_ and _I might be, as well_, and then there's a gentle hand on his cheek that's shaking slightly as Leo draws him round to face him, and his stubble's scratchy on Danny's face and he tastes like cigarettes and maleness, and Jesus, Danny can't get enough of it.

* * *

Somehow he manages to get through the first semester of school, again. Only one more year left after this one, he reminds himself over and over, and barely passes his classes by the skin of his teeth. Leo stretches out on his back, asks him questions about biology and chemistry for his tests until Danny gets bored and tackles him. But it does mean he gets to pass science, so it can't all be bad, and he gets laid which is even better.

In January they get a phonecall from the state jail. Raffi's been busted for dealing smack and he's locked up, Danny doesn't know for how long because he left the room way before his dad hung up the phone. Later that night his dad gets drunk and his mom cries and his dad hits her, and she cries even more. And Danny hits his dad as hard as he can, a satisfying crunch as his nose breaks and blood spurts warm over Danny's hands, and he shouts at his mom to run but she doesn't, of course she fucking doesn't, so he runs instead, and he turns up at Leo's apartment at two in the morning with an apologetic grin, bloody knuckles, and a hastily packed backpack.

* * *

Danny keeps having these really weird, fucked-up dreams. About people he recognises but can't remember, and when he opens his eyes and tries to place the dreams back into his life he can't seem to manage it. Foreign houses, squalling children in the next room, a great aching hole inside him somewhere. The feeling of never being rooted down, nowhere that he calls home. No Leo, no Javier, no Bella. No Mami and Papi, but he figures that some things don't change.

* * *

Leo only lets him go out at weekends.

To begin with, Danny's a little mad at him. Because not even his mom was like this, she let him go out and get drunk on weekdays and sometimes when he's doing homework it's all he can fucking think about. But his grades are improving and while there's no way he's going to college, it's… good. A sense of achievement that he hasn't felt in a while.

They meet up with the other guys, and with Silvana and Bella, at weekends. It's pretty difficult to meet Bella's eyes but she's hanging off Chico's arm now, and Danny's surprised that he isn't even a little jealous. Javier's into fucked-up stuff now, eyes bleary, massive shadows underneath them and puncture marks on his arms. Danny's pretty sure that he's sharing needles with Silvana and that's just-- he has no words. He's never tried smack and he doesn't think that he wants to. It fucked up Raffi enough, there doesn't need to be another Alvarez that's hooked on that shit.

But generally, he likes living with Leo. He gets to wake up next to someone every morning, a really great, hot someone. And yeah, it's just a studio apartment and on one side of them there's a baby screaming and on the other side they keep having loud parties, but they just counter that by making some noise of their own.

And it's nice to wake up at four AM, and lie in bed watching the sun rise, watching as the contours of Leo's body are highlighted gold and his black hair shines in the sunlight. It's really nice.

* * *

That summer they sleep through the day and go out through the night, and stay out until the next morning. Javier's getting more and more gaunt and serious, and he's started stopping people in the street. People who look like they have money, sometimes even people that don't, because they don't get a whole lot of rich people round where they live. Mostly drunk kids on holiday in Miami, come to the beach on daddy's money, and surely they won't miss fifty bucks.

It's easy to turn a blind eye to Javier. He can be a dick sometimes when he needs a fix, and it's easier this way.

* * *

One night they're out, Javier and Silvana curled around each other on a bench, Miguel disappeared with some girl, and Bella and Chico making the car creak. Danny's sitting with Leo on the sidewalk, sharing a joint and a bottle of cheap wine and he practically sees Javier's eyes light up when the figure of someone who looks suspiciously like a frat boy stumbles towards them.

He's clearly drunk and Javier's unfolding himself like a cat, not as graceful as he used to be but still not exactly clumsy, and Danny hears Leo sigh next to him. He tries not to listen as Javier hisses something threatening at the guy, but it's difficult not to hear as his voice rises, what the fuck do you mean, you haven't got any money, you must have something, don't you--

Hey, jerk, I don't have anything, so just back off, and Danny recognises the voice. He stands, approaches them a little unsteadily and it's the guy from the beach, ol' blue eyes, still protesting and insisting he has nothing, and Javier looks unsettled. He's glancing around and then blue eyes tries to make a break for it. Mistake number one because Javier lunges forward, grabs his shoulder with one hand and punches him with the other fist. Blue eyes makes a muffled groaning sound and slumps down to the sidewalk. Javier glances from side to side, darts back to the bench and grabs Silvana with hard hands to make her run with him back to the car and Danny seriously can't help himself from jerking forwards towards blue eyes. He's on the sidewalk, making a weird choking sputtering noise.

Pussy. Stupid fucking frat boy, leave him there, he's okay. Leo's derogatory voice, sauntering up behind Danny and placing a hand on his shoulder. And come on, Danny, let's get out of here.

Everyone else has scattered and suddenly Danny feels completely sober because this kid hasn't moved yet and he's pretty sure that isn't a good thing. He touches him, lightly. Danny's hand comes away crimson with blood, and it's shimmering in the lamplight.

* * *

Danny hasn't felt comfortable with Leo for a while now.

Ever since blue eyes, actually. He didn't like Leo's reaction, not at all, especially after they found out that Javier must have had a knife in his fist because blue eyes was bleeding pretty damn badly. He doesn't understand where Leo's impulse to run came from. He doesn't like where that thought leads him - coward, wimp, what a fucking pussy - and he doesn't like the way he finds himself looking at Leo, sometimes, when he doesn't realise.

Leo's reaction is just, well, the kid was fine, move the fuck on, Danny, get over it, but the point is, he might not have been. A rich kid went into the wrong area of town and bled to death on the sidewalk, the newspapers would have said, and Danny doesn't think he could have stood to see it. At the time he just borrowed Leo's sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over his face, called 911 and ditched the kid in a 24-7 grocery store, waiting until he saw the flashing lights of the ambulance before running. Now he wishes he'd done more but he read the newspapers meticulously from cover to cover for months after, and he didn't read about any rich kids dying in Miami from stabwounds.

Javier scares him a little, now, although he'd never admit it. Now Danny knows what he's capable of, and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it at all.

* * *

Danny packs up and leaves just before the end of his senior year. His grades have slipped again, too distracted by the perks of living with Leo to do any work, and there's not much point in sticking around just to be told he's not going to graduate. He goes home while his dad's at work, kisses his mom goodbye and gives her a hundred bucks he managed to save up from flipping burgers, because his dad never did let her have anything she wanted.

He tells her he'll be back, but he doesn't think she believes him. Once Raffi told her he was coming home one day; Danny figures that once you lose faith in one son, it's easy to let the other one slide away as well.

He leaves a note for Leo next to the phone. It says, 'sorry', and 'goodbye'. Danny never was too good at articulating his feelings.

* * *

**TBC.**


End file.
